PR and our Political Leaders spinning democracy

national | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis

Friday September 22, 2006 12:03

by Mark Malone - WSM

The Irish government’s explicit support for Shell’s proposed development in Rossport, against the demands and wishes of a large proportion of the locally affected community, exemplifies not only the highly organised and funded public relation strategy that Shell and its partners have used. It also highlights the massive democratic deficit in this country. In a broader sense corporate Public Relations, and it’s close links to government, is perhaps one of the most potent factors in curtailing meaningful democracy.

PR companies hired to ‘troubleshoot’ pesky communities with bribe and slur tactics that Cromwell would be proud of. They also use their closely forged links with privately owned mass media and political ‘leaders’ to mount strategic campaigns to influence the direction of policies which affect us all, for the benefit of their clients. By their very nature the practices of PR companies, in eroding what little democracy we have, is one of the least examined and understood issues today.

The only time we get to have any input into the structures of ‘democracy’ in this country, is a five minute spell in the voting booth once every few of years. However, the captains of industry (the folks who make their money from our work) have unparallel access to our elected representatives. Across all sectors, corporate PR, working for big business, lobby governments for their gain, and our collective detriment.

Whether it’s pushing for public/private partnerships, introducing competition into our health system (read profiting from the sick) or putting the spin on laying off workers, corporate PR will do the (shite)talking for you. This isn’t about conspiracy though. It’s just the way things our done in today’s democracy. PR consultants offer businesses access to Ministers in return for cash. It might be couched in more subtle terms on their websites but that’s what it amounts to.

One of the largest Irish PR consultancies is MRPA Kinman. They offer unrivalled “communications with the political and regulatory system”, as well as crisis management for “industrial accidents, closures / redundancies and community relations issues”. In reality they will make sure your business proposals get to the top of the pile, and discussed over dinner, and if some of your pesky workers have fallen, been crushed, or simply just cost too much MRPA Kinman will make sure that the smell of roses doesn’t fade at all. They will also file stories to the media spinning against local communities should the need arise.

It’s pretty interesting to look at who the head honchos are. The Managing Director is Ray Gordon, who for five years was a spokesperson for the Progressive Democrat’s. Another director, Stephen O’Byrnes, was policy director of the PD’s. This company works for many large pharma-chemical giants and as such tries to influence public health policy.

One wonders what influence the company’s director Brian Geoghegan brings to bear considering he is married PD leader and Tanaiste Mary Harney, our dearly loved minister for health. Formerly head of the employers’ outfit, IBEC, Brian, like the other folks mentioned, use their close ‘connections’ with current Ministers to skew government policies in favour of their clients.

This is but one example of how PR companies have more input into policy development that most of us put together. They are also complicit in attempting to stamp out the legitimate and much needed public resistance to the commodification of democracy. It is vital for activists, concerned communities, and all those that value the idea and realisation in practice, of real democracy, to understand the role that corporate PR plays in misrepresenting truths to the public at large, whilst simultaneously distorting decision making processes by having unparalleled access to our ‘elected representatives’.

Check out http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/item.shtml?x=51961 for more reading on corporate PR strategies against communities in struggle.

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Comments (2 of 2)

More on the workings of spin & PR

by Terence

Fri Sep 22, 2006 15:13

This is an important topic and it is good to see it raised here.

Governements have to put on the facade that they are democratic, although these days they seem less bothered about it than before. As as part of that facade they have to been seen to react and to be sensitive to public opinion, although on issues important to them, they ignore it all together. For example the fact that 150,000 or so marched against the war was ignored and the goverment still co-operated by offering the use of Shannon. But even then Bertie Ahern tried to spin even this, by claiming that the people marching were supporting the government.

It is of course then to the advantage of the government if public opinion can be either manufactured or manipulated to their needs or at least to whom they government serve. One would think that is the people, but in reality it is big business & corporations and their wealthy owners whom they serve. The media is very much concentrated in the hands of a few large corporations and that which is not, but has much influence is in the hands of the state. The interests of these large media companies are very much in alignment with the state and there is pretty much a close symbiotic relationship between the two.

Many have written about how public opinion is manipulated and there is plenty of evidence for it. For example Noam Chomsky's book: 'The Manufacture of Consent' is a good example. Another good but more shorter account of this can be found in: 'Murdoch almighty: When public loses opinion' at http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_1227.shtml

In a the PR industry which is part and parcel of all this, a good analysis of how the PR industry deceives and manipulates the public can be found in: WAR ON TRUTH - The Secret Battle for the American Mind at http://www.ratical.org/ratville/PRcorrupt.html

An interesting thing to think about though is why is this so effective? It is often said that no-one believes everything they read in the papers and so on, but yet we have the situation in the world today, where we can barely get any decent discussion about the multitude of global problems except when they do come up, they are framed in the current dominant economic model where the profit motive is number one and no serious challenge of that is permitted by the same corporate press.

A partial answer can be found on reading through the book: The Wisdom Of Crowds. Basically the book outlines a (good) case for how a crowd made up of a diverse range of people with a diverse range of knowledge and information will always be better than an individual and the evidence he presents seems to bear this out. What is interesting but not neccessarily pointed out in the book, is that people know this instinctively. It is often suggested that the human mind is pretty much the same as it was 40,000 years ago. And if that is the case for most of that time people would have lived in smaller groups where people would be pretty much diverse, and would have great knowledge about the environment in order to survive. There was of course no PR industry then. And for most of time it is self evident that many heads would have been better than one.

Fast fowarding to today, we probably have carried that instinct or experience through, so when we settle or form on an opinion we look to others. Naturally if we seem to be the odd one out and everyone else seems to be in some kind of agreement, then most people will figure they are wrong and take up the opinion of the crowd. Little do people realize largely because they probably never think about it or realize the size and extent of the media and PR industry nor the efforts that they go to deceive, that all these other people are reading pretty much the same singular thing. There is in fact little or no diversity in their knowledge. (In the book, Wisdom of Crowds the author illustrates how things like stock market or property bubbles arise where everyone is basically reading the same information and diversity has been lost).

In our case today then what you don't realize is that all your friends, accquaintances and mostly everyone else is getting their information from just the same small handfull of news papers and or media reports. Since most of these are corporate owned and have very much the same agenda there is little diversity of information and by controlling the flow of information, in terms of what is said or not said, how questions are asked, what questions are asked, framing of the debate, the types of images shown or not shown and of course the type of outright lies and spin they use means that they have excellent control over what people think considering for many subjects and issues they are the sole sources of information upon which people form opinions on those matters.

Hence the vital role of alternative media like Indymedia to get other stories and alternative viewpoints and additional information out. But when we work on our own, against the saturation and dominance everywhere of the mainstream media, we are still fighting that ingrained and at one time protective mechanism to go with the crowd.

Those in power realize that the media and it's control and thereby the control of public opinion is their most effective tool as it is only through knowledge and awareness of things that people will want to change anything. If they (people) don't have that, then that change will never come about.

Century of the Self

by d'other

Fri Sep 22, 2006 19:34

Century of the Self by Adam Curtis of Power of Nightmares fame is well worth a gander for the origins of PR.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-26376353651914...28174

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PR and our Political Leaders spinning democracy

Comments (2 of 2)